Sydney’s working up an appetite for one-stop dining shops

Forget long, complicated menus. Diners are hungry for restaurants with a specific focus — from fried chicken for bagels and skewers. Here are 10 of the best:

Chef Morgan McGlone pioneered the popularity of fried chicken in Sydney through Belle’s Hot Chicken pop-up in Barangaroo. Picture: Adam Yip

FORGET long, complicated menus — diners now want restaurants with a specific focus.

Eateries that specialise in one or two dishes rather than a broad range can offer a superior product — and they are now popping up throughout Sydney.

Chef Morgan McGlone may have done his apprenticeship with fine dining chef Luke Mangan but he’s best known for pioneering the popularity of fried chicken in Sydney through Belle’s Hot Chicken pop-up in Barangaroo.

“In the US I worked in a couple of restaurants in the south and fried chicken was something I really enjoyed,” he said.

“There are places dedicated to just burgers so why not give fried chicken the same respect? If we keep making it every day it continues to get better and more consistent.”

Belle’s Hot Chicken sells about 1000kg of chicken a week and McGlone looks at the recipe every few months.

“The chicken generally stays the same from the original recipe but it’s something that evolves, from the flour we use, to adding two or three spices to new frying units that clean the oil so you never get that fish and chips smell, which makes it better to cook the chicken in.”

1: Belle's Hot Chicken: What started as a summer pop-up at Barangaroo has reached cult status and spawned a permanent restaurant, due to open in September. This is seriously good fried chicken that comes in five levels of spice, from the mellow Southern to Really F***ing Hot.

2: Yakitori Yurippi: Everyone loves eating things on sticks, which is the idea behind this yakitori bar in Crows Nest. A variety of skewered meats are cooked the traditional Japanese way, grilled over charcoal rather than gas for that smoky flavour.

3: Dumpling and beer: It’s all in the name at this hole-in-the-wall eatery at Potts Point. The menu reads like a yum cha greatest hits list, including pork and prawn dim sum, prawn gow gee and BBQ pork buns and the beers are served in the right glass for ultimate enjoyment.

Sometimes a product’s popularity is the catalyst for a specialist venture. When people would call Ameer “AJ’’ El-Issa’s family restaurant in Croydon just to order one takeaway dessert, he knew he was on to something.

With his background as an architect, he turned a shipping container into a mobile bakery in 2014 to sell knafeh, a Middle Eastern dessert, using his mum Nabila’s recipe.

“We served hundreds of people on our test night and knew it was a niche in the market that we could fill,” he said.

4: Knafeh Bakery: A former shipping container has been transformed into a mobile bakery to spread the love of this Middle Eastern dessert across Sydney. It’s a cheese-filled pastry soaked in sugary syrup and can include rose or orange blossom water and pistachios.

5: Smoking Gun Bagels: This new spot in Woolloomoolo has only been open a few weeks and focuses on Montreal-style bagels, which are smaller and sweeter than their New York cousins. The toppings have an Aussie bent with native ingredients like wattle seed and mountain pepper.

6: Buffalo Dining Club: This mozzarella bar in Darlinghurst is all about the cheese. You get balls of fresh mozzarella or creamy burrata served with two sides or spaghetti cacio e pepper, cheese and pepper, served in a hollowed out parmesan wheel. It’s theatrical and delicious.

Knafeh Bakery now travels all over Sydney, from Bondi to Rouse Hill and sells, on average, about 1000 of the popular desserts a night.

“Being niche is a strength, we’re not just offering standard cafe fare,” El-Issa said.

“We have Moroccan mint tea and bottled water, in summer we do a home-style lemonade but as far food goes it’s only knafeh. We do what we do and nail it instead of trying to be everything to everyone.”

After enjoying the yakitori bars in Japan and being frustrated that he couldn’t find something similar in Sydney, Tin Shea opened Yakitori Yurripi in Crows Nest.

7: Ramen Ikkyu: Chef Harunobu Inukai turned his back on running Blancharu, a French-Japanese fusion restaurant, in favour of this little stall in a Chinatown food court when he realised his lunchtime bowls of ramen proved more popular than the fancier fare.

8: Trunk Road: Everyone loves a kebab and this is the Indian street food version. Instead of flat bread, the meat and filling is wrapped in flaky rounds of roti bread that are traditionally eaten on the road, hence the name ‘roadies’.

9: Marrickville Pork Roll: Who has the best pork roll in Sydney? It’s a hotly contested title but if the queues are anything to go by, this wins by a landslide. It’s an institution and has recently opened bigger digs just down the road.

“My mate and I started grilling it in the markets about two years ago,” he said.

“In Japan a lot of it is done outdoors so it was a good way to start. We realised it was popular among Japanese people and the locals so we thought we’ll give it a crack and opened last October.”

The menu is simply a variety of skewered meats and offal with a few side dishes.

“It’s the authentic experience of grilling over charcoal, which makes the meat tender and there’s that smokiness that flavours the food,” he said.

“People come for the yakitori and it’s good to provide what they are looking for.”

10: La Piadina, Bondi: When people think of Italian bread, ciabatta or focaccia spring to mind. But this Bondi restaurant is all about thin, flat bread sandwiches from the Romagna region which are cooked to order and served warm at roadside kiosks in Italy.

Originally published as Sydney’s working up an appetite for one-stop dining shops